I interviewed usability and user experience veteran, Susan Weinshenk, on some of the ways that the professional UX community can do a much better job with incorporating video to create more positive customer relationships on e-commerce websites – both for improved sales and overall shopping experience.

In our continued “how-to” series on creating product videos in retail and e-commerce, I interviewed Jon Schroeder, Video Director and Editor for Crutchfield Electronics. Jon shared with us about Crutchfield’s own formula for effective ROI and customer relationships with how-to videos, as well as some tips for what other retail and e-commerce businesses can be doing with instructional videos today. (To read more about why I think how-to videos are effective for retailers and brands, and for some tips on creating them, you can read my previous article, “How-To” Product Videos Tips for Every E-Commerce Business.)

In this post, I’ll outline cost savings possible to achieve by using a video commerce platform. (In Part I, I explained what a video commerce platform was, Part II outlined primary revenue drivers, Part III the revenue calculations).

In my own view, I generally don’t believe that cost savings are the most compelling reason to select a video commerce platform compared to either an online video platform or even a content delivery network. That’s because video commerce platforms live “upstack” from these other two types of technologies and primarily exist to create new results…

In a transformed business environment where social activity is given it’s own currency and value, retailers and e-commerce businesses today are understanding better that properly measuring the performance of a video campaigns requires more than just the single ratio of money to deem if it has been successful return on its investment. The Social Return on Investment, or “SROI,” is a relatively new value system that is helping companies better understand value goals that have been often overlooked before, and video is ripe with data for helping us achieve that.

Most businesses wouldn’t argue with the statement that video helps drive consumer engagement. It’s what the video content should consist of that usually sparks the debates. Just what exactly are consumers supposed to be engaging with in these videos? Well, to get right down to the ROI, we must first ask what it is that the business is selling… Products or services?

Historically, product videos have dominated the video commerce frontier. Not surprisingly, they are relatively easy to produce and have a clear cut purpose. Utilizing sight, sound and motion to virtually deliver the product experience, these videos…

That title’s a lot more catchy than, ‘ROI of Video Commerce Platforms, Part 3,’ isn’t it?  Thought so!

It has been over a month since Part 2 in the ‘ROI of Video Commerce Platforms’ series, so my apologies up front for the wait.  It took longer than I thought to gather the data required for this post.  Now, I have it, and it’s time to share some revenue calculations and an example for how video commerce technology generates revenue.

Before we get too far into it, two disclaimers are warranted: First, I’m one of the…

Grant Crowell interviews Daniel Dreymann, Founder and CEO of the certified email solutions provider Goodmail, about their video technology products, CertifiedVideo and CertifiedVideo .GIF, which ensure delivery and playback of video at an expanding group of ISPs for 2010-2011 and beyond.

Yesterday, Jamie Beckland wrote a post highlighting why e-commerce merchants need to think twice about interactive video shopping.  To me, the central point of the article was summed up with this statement: “Most e-commerce marketers have bigger fish to fry than getting someone to convert from a [video] banner.” (I added the word “video” to the quote).

I’ll start this counterpoint article in an unexpected way: I couldn’t agree with Jamie more. But I think the article missed the larger point by confining interactive video shopping to “banners.”  Display advertising for most retailers produces no more than 2% –…

I’ve just returned from the 2010 Video Commerce Summit hosted by my company, Liveclicker. This is the second time the summit was held in Seattle, WA.  In all, the summit was 2X the size of last year’s with 75 onsite attendees from many of the top e-commerce sites including Amazon.com, Bed Bath & Beyond, Zappos, Microsoft, Costco, Nordstrom, REI, Overstock.com, and over 20 others.  REELSEO was onsite for videography.  Throughout this week we’ll see interviews on REELSEO.com highlighting learnings from the speakers and attendees.

Jimmy Healey from Onlineshoes.com addresses the audience during his

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